Monday, 24 September --- Final Day of the Encuentro: Ceremonies and Good-Night Blessings.

Each day at the Encuentro has begun with several of the presenters offering ‘observances’ – some sort of meditation or ceremony that could give people a taste of the actual practices of a particular religion – and, on this last day of the event, it was my turn to do so. I’d considered several different options before coming to Monterrey, most of which involved being out-of-doors, but had to discard them once I realized that the observances were also being held at the Cinterplex, and that there didn’t appear to be any other more ‘natural’ setting within easy walking distance.

It being eight o’clock on a Monday morning, I had expected a small turnout, but over fifty people showed up. The Catholic nun who’d been at my talk the previous morning was back, and this time she'd brought several other nuns along, as well as a small group of young seminarians. Paola, of the Monterrey pagan group, was there as well, and I recognized quite a few faces from some of my other presentations. There was also a bunch of new people, of course, and a handful of them who were early arrivals seemed a little apprehensive about taking part in a pagan ceremony, especially when I told them that it would be participatory and that I’d rather not have a lot of ‘observers,’ but they seemed to relax a bit once the nuns and the seminarians arrived, all eager to jump right in.

I started with a brief explanation of what we were about to do: a very simple ritual to begin the day by opening ourselves to an awareness of the sacred Earth, of our connection to her and to all of her forces, currents and beings, including each other. I talked a little bit about the significance of the circle and the four elements as symbols commonly found in pagan spirituality, and then I taught them Spanish versions of three chants that we often use in the EarthSpirit Community – Air I Am, We Are a Circle, and One With the Soul of the Earth – each accompanied by a simple and different dance. At first they were a bit tentative, but as we started to move, they became more and more animated (several of them, it turned out, could really sing, especially a couple of the seminarians), so by the time we finished by holding the last note of Unidos con el alma de la Madre Tierra… in multiple harmonies, just about everyone was wearing a huge smile, and as soon as we finished they all began enthusiastically embracing each other, and commenting on how beautiful the ceremony had been, and how wonderful they felt.

They kept me an extra half-hour after our time had ended, standing outside the room so the next speaker could get ready, while they carefully copied down the lyrics for the chants and asked a lot of other questions about paganism. On my way to the next event, as I hurried down the hall past the group of nuns, I overheard one of them talking about how there was nothing in those chants that anyone could object to if they tried to sing them in church, while another wondered about moving the pews out of the way so they could dance…

My next panel was another session of Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred, and it provided a good example of one of the invaluable dimensions of the interfaith movement – the many and important networking connections that can be made. In this case, one of my co-panelists was Israel Batista, a Methodist minister who is the secretary general of the Latin American Council of Churches. Israel is Cuban, but now lives in Quito, Ecuador. As it turns out, just a few weeks before the Encuentro I had helped to spread the news about a vicious assault on two leaders of the Zapara Indians, Gloria Ushigua (with whom I had personally worked in the past) and Rosa Gualinga in the northeast of Ecuador. I had been sharing the news about the attack against Gloria and Rosa with various religious representatives throughout the Encuentro, so, after the panel, I spoke with Israel about that incident and solicited his help, which he was most willing and eager to give; as a result, I was able to send Israel’s contact information to Gloria’s and Rosa’s friends in Puyo, and am now in the process of following up to see if anything was able to come of it. This has always been, for me, one of the most fulfilling aspects of the interfaith movement: to make those connections and utilize our collective resources to try to help where help is needed; and the real beauty of it is that our particular scenario – a Cuban Methodist minister and an American pagan priest working together in México on behalf of two Indian women in Ecuador – is not at all unusual, it’s the kind of thing that happens all the time.

My final panel, a repeat installment on the Role of Religion and Spirituality in Society was again moderated by Nancy Martin and included Swami Dayananda Saraswati, one of the world’s leading exponents of Advaita Vedanta, and Sheikh Suhail Assad, an Argentinian imam born of Lebanese parents, who now lives and teaches in Iran, but is also the spiritual guide for Muslim communities in nine Latin American countries, including México.

As Swami Dayananda explained it, Advaita Vedanta is, essentially, a way of spirituality through scholarship, in that it is centered in the profound study of the Vedas and, unlike other strands of Hinduism, does not at all emphasize the mystical experience. For Sheikh Assad, the essence of Islam is not merely a religion premised on beliefs, but a completely integrated way of life in which, ideally, there is no distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular.’ He took the interesting position of advocating full freedom for the practice of all religions (and, in the process, discussed some of his ongoing efforts to insure religious rights for all in Iran) while supporting the validity – and in some cases, he stressed, the necessity – of theocratic governments. In his view, religion cannot have any real impact in society unless it is translated into law.

My own comments focused on the need for religious and spiritual traditions to not succumb to mere materialism and secularism, but, among their various functions, to serve in society as the keepers of an awareness of the Great Mystery, of the mystical experience which takes us beyond ordinary human existence and brings us to direct communion with the Sacred.

Clearly, our emphases were all quite distinct, and even seemingly divergent; but, unlike the conservative Catholic panelist the day before, everyone strove to articulate his position with a good deal of sensitivity and respect. I would have welcomed the opportunity, not so much to debate, but to explore more deeply these various points of view, but, again, the format didn’t really allow space for it. Nevertheless, the panel illustrated quite clearly the great diversity of religious and spiritual approaches found throughout the world, and the Parliament’s mission to bring them together in open and respectful dialogue.

Paola, the young Monterrey pagan, came to all of my presentations this morning, so after my last panel I took her out to lunch. She’s really a very interesting person, quite low-key and unassuming, but with a very observant and keen mind, and deeply open to new experiences. We talked for a couple of hours, and clearly the Encuentro is having a profound effect on her; it was delightful to listen to her talk about all the new and fascinating things she’s been discovering this weekend – almost like watching a flower open. I really like her, and hope we’ll stay in touch.

Right after lunch, the Three Amigas came by and took me out for a long drive throughout Monterrey, something they’d been promising me for a couple of days. We went all over the downtown, taking in such typical tourist sights as the cathedral, built in the early 1600s, and the famous Tower of Commerce, a huge red obelisk that has become the symbol of this city, and which has, at the top, a laser beam that during the night casts a spotlight on the various important landmarks. As part of the tour, they also took me to the suburbs, where the "real regiomontanos live," including a visit to a candy factory (really, a couple of large rooms in the back of a regular house) where a local family makes these caramel-based candies called glorias (‘glories’) which are traditional to this region and quite famous throughout México. I made sure to buy a basketful of them to take back home.

We returned to the hotel just in time for dinner. As I walked in, Emily Chou, one of the Parliament’s staffers, grabbed me and asked me if I would offer one of three blessings at the start of tonight’s closing plenary, which I gladly agreed to do. Then Nancy Martin invited me to join a small group at her table, composed of her husband, Joseph Runzo, who, like her, is a professor at Chapman University and co-director of the Global Ethics and Religion Forum; Katherine Marshall, until recently an executive officer of the World Bank, specializing in social policy and world poverty; and Tu Wei-ming, director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and a leading proponent of Confucian humanism, who was in the middle of talking about the current state of Sino-Tibetan relations, and changing attitudes toward Tibet’s self-determination, the role of the Dalai Lama, etc. It was a fascinating discussion, an insider’s anecdotal view of the many facets of a very complex and delicate situation.

A little later I arrived at the Arena Monterrey, where things were almost ready for the closing plenary. They seated the three of us who were offering blessings in the front row, just a few chairs away from my old buddy, the governor of Nuevo León and his entourage. While we were waiting, I was introduced to Luis de la Cruz, a Wixarrika (Huichol) mara’akame (shaman) who would be offering a blessing at the end. This appeared to be the largest audience yet at the Arena, probably as a result of media and word-of-mouth reports having had enough of a chance to spread over the weekend.

The first blessing was offered by Sister Jayanti Kirplani, the European director of the Brahma Kumaris and their representative to the United Nations in Geneva. I had met her at the Chicago Parliament in 1993, and had the pleasure of getting to know her a little bit during the Assembly of Religious and Spiritual Leaders in Montserrat, prior to the 2004 Parliament. She led a short, but beautiful and soothing meditation, and was followed to the podium by Tu Wei-ming, whose offering, which quoted a passage from the Analects of Confucius, was more philosophical in tone.

When my turn came, I thanked them all in Spanish for their very warm hospitality, and told them that, on behalf of my community, I was going to offer them a Gaelic song of blessing and parting from the Highlands of Scotland that wishes them slàinte (health), sonas (happiness), and dòchas (hope), and reminds us, as we take our leave from each other, that even though we should find ourselves an ocean apart, we will remain united by the times we have spent together and by the bonds of kinship. And then I sang them Oidhche Mhath Leibh, Beannachd Leibh (‘Good-Night, and Blessings to You’).

When I finished, nothing at all happened – dead silence. Sometimes I go into a light trance when I sing that song, because of what it means to me, so I thought perhaps I had just tuned out the sounds. But as I moved away from the podium, the Arena remained completely silent. I was halfway across the stage when the place seemed to erupt all at once, as if somebody had just flipped a switch and turned up the volume full blast. I was a little confused by what was going on, but as I got off the stage all of these people were standing, clapping whistling, shouting. As I approached my seat, the governor rushed up to meet me and gave me a big, pumping handshake. “That was magic, my friend!,” he enthused. “You’re a druid! You’re a true druid!” I believe I may have blushed…

As I sat there, uninterested in the two or three political speeches that followed, I reflected on the kind of reaction that tonight’s crowd had to one brief, simple song that they could not even understand, but which somehow conveyed to them some sense of who we are, some sense of the beauty and spirituality of our traditions. Over the years I have encountered, a number of times, that kind of very strong, positive, even enthusiastic reaction from non-pagans to a taste of the Old Ways (though perhaps not quite as strongly as here in Monterrey), and, in thinking about it, I realized that, in most of those instances, what people responded to was something basic, something fundamentally simple and traditional which really communicates the essence of pagan spirituality. It seems to me that a lot of pagans today tend to focus far too much on external trappings or on modern, artificial notions of ‘how we are supposed to be’ which sometimes border on the dogmatic, and in the process wind up overlooking some of the most fundamental and compelling elements of the pagan traditions. Perhaps, occasionally, it takes others who may not even share our practices or beliefs, to mirror back to us some of what may be most meaningful in our own paths.

The plenary program continued with a montage of video images and interviews taken at the Encuentro, highlighting the diversity of spiritual paths that had been included. This was followed by a local mother-child duo performing traditional dances from India – the mother alone at first, then joined by her fourteen-year-old daughter. The dances themselves were quite beautiful to watch, but even more so was the layered, deeply loving relationship between the two women expressing itself through their movements. They were followed in turn by the evening’s keynote speaker, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who spoke about the importance of interfaith encounters such as this one in promoting peace and understanding throughout the world. To close out the program, Don Luis de la Cruz, the mara’akame, offered us a traditional Wixarrika blessing to all the directions, using a ceremonial arrow which he dipped in water and then sprinkled all around. And then, finally, the World Interreligious Encounter came to a close.

I went back to the hotel with some of the Monterrey pagans to get a snack and some coffee. We were sitting in the lobby when I noticed Dirk Ficca, the Parliament’s executive director, walking by with a group of people. When Dirk saw me, he came straight over and gave me a big hug, saying, “That was really amazing tonight, my friend; you were really amazing!” I thanked him, but he went on: “Did you hear that silence after you finished? Ten thousand people, and not a sound – I heard that silence, that was really something!” Over the next couple of days, several of the other presenters and staff made similar comments; it was very gratifying to feel that I’d been able to convey a sense of pagan spirituality to such a large and diverse group of people.

As I bid good-night and good-bye to my new pagan friends from Monterrey, Paola said she had a small present for me and my community, and gave me a folded piece of paper. It conveyed a sweet message, which I include here in translation:

A gift. A true gift is a gesture, a voluntary expression of warmth, of love. Today I want to offer a small gift from my heart to Andras and to his community in gratitude for the gifts they have brought to my people and to me. For sharing their time, their experience, their solidarity and their kinship. For renewing the hope for the survival of the ancestral cultures and for helping us to open to new spiritual horizons that offer us more and better resources with which we may reconstruct our past, understand our present, and build the foundations for a more optimistic future. With much love and happiness I send you all a smile, hugs, and my very best wishes. In closing, I would like to share with you a remembrance and a poetic fragment that I wrote on December 31, 2006.

The remembrance: “One spring afternoon I saw, on the mountains, the clouds nestling together like sugar-covered candies, forming such a beautiful landscape that one could not tell where the sky ended and the earth began. The colorful ribbons of a huge rainbow combed from left to right the surface of the trees, and a soft rain caressed the glow of those of us who gazed upon it.”

The lyric fragment:

“The mountains
crumble where
the moon
laughs
and among clouds
I drop my petals
lightly.”

– Paola Rodríguez Cruz

Tuesday, 25 September 2007 --- A Gathering of ‘Experts’

Since earlier this year, the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions has been compiling a ‘State of the Interreligious Movement Report’ that would provide a comprehensive snapshot of where the interfaith community is at this juncture, and which could serve as a valuable resource for interreligious groups, organizers of interfaith events, academic researchers, funding organizations, etc. To take advantage of the presence of so many and diverse religious representatives in Monterrey, the Council organized a ‘Gathering of Experts’ – to be held over the two days following the Encuentro – in order to generate more material for the report.

I was one of those invited to participate, so on Tuesday and Wednesday, in sessions lasting from early morning to mid-afternoon, I joined some thirty other presenters for round-table discussions of such questions as: How do you define ‘religion’? Is there a presumed definition of ‘religion’ in the interreligious movement? Are there many such definitions? What has been the impact of modernity on contemporary religion? What should be the relationship between religions and political institutions? How do you determine who are legitimate representatives of religious traditions in interreligious work? What is the greatest challenge to religion in the twenty-first century?

As background for our discussions, we had read an article entitled The Interfaith Movement: An Incomplete Assessment by Kusumita Pedersen (one of my colleagues on the Parliament’s board of trustees), which had originally appeared in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies and provides a good model for the kind of descriptive and evaluative report that the Council is preparing; and a thought-provoking essay by Parliament staffer Jeff Israel on What Counts as ‘Religion’ in the Interreligious Movement?, which analyzes five popular (and conflicting) definitions of religions: as channels of transcendent and universal truths, as convenient delusions, as moral communities, as personal experiences of the sacred, or as organized systems of meaning. Neither these classifications nor the questions posed above were to be interpreted as ‘correct’ or ‘definitive’ – their purpose was mainly to stimulate thought and generate discussion.

Dirk Ficca provided a brief but very clear articulation of the Parliament’s mission and philosophy. He noted that the Parliament’s job as an organization is not to advocate specific points of view or adjudicate disputes among the world’s religions, but rather to provide the environment where those ideas or conflicts can be openly and fairly discussed. He stressed that the Parliament seeks to promote harmony, rather than unity, among the world’s religions; convergence of ideas, not necessarily consensus; facilitation, rather than structure; and trust, rather than agreement.

He also did an outstanding job steering our conversations over those two days, as we brainstormed, asked questions of each other, and provided examples and models based on our own spiritual traditions. I won’t go into further detail about those discussions here, both because it would take up too much time and space, and also because the specifics really belong in the report, which is due to come out later this year. But I will say that, based on those talks and on what I’ve read so far, anyone who’s interested in interfaith relations should be sure to check the Parliament’s website in the upcoming months and get a copy, since it looks like it will be a comprehensive and valuable tool.

One section of the report will include listings of interfaith resources from the various religions represented, mostly culled from online sources. I was glad to have read the first draft of the report prior to the Encuentro, since we were listed in that section as 'Neo-Pagan and Wiccan' – an unsatisfactory though understandable classification given that, even among ourselves, there's no definitive consensus on taxonomy. There are Wiccans and Neo-Pagans in our community, to be sure, but then there are all those of us who aren't; to use those two designations automatically excludes all the thousands of pagans who don't fall under those categories. As I pointed out to the people drafting the report, to keep those classifications would be tantamount to saying 'Baptists and Mormons' instead of 'Christians'; that would probably not make the Catholics and the Presbyterians very happy. Thankfully, by the next draft the listing had been changed to simply read 'Pagan.'

Following today's meeting, the Parliament arranged for us a guided tour of one of the local museums. At breakfast this morning with Joe Runzo and Nancy Martin, they’d expressed an interest in having dinner someplace other than the hotel (but for a few Mexican touches, the food typically has been fairly bland American fare). I told them about El Rey del Cabrito, which piqued their interest, so we made plans to go there after the tour. I also told them about a different museum, which, as luck would have it, is featuring an exhibit of works by Frida Kahlo, one of my favorite painters, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of her birth, and that interested them as well (prior to my trip, I made plans to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum when I got to Mexico City, but this exhibit in Monterrey was an exciting, unexpected bonus).

Late afternoon, a chartered bus took us to the Museo de Historia Mexicana. The group of us in the photo taken at the entrance of the museum includes, from left to right: Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh (Sikh), Seshagiri Rao (Hindu), Anop Vora (Jain), Raksha Shah (Jain), myself, Joseph Prabhu (Catholic), and William Lesher (Lutheran).

The exhibits were quite interesting, tracing the history of México by organizing it into four main stages – the Amerindian period from pre-history up to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors; the Virreinato de Nueva España (the Viceroyship of New Spain, which extended from what is now North Dakota to British Columbia, and all the lands directly south all the way to Costa Rica, also including Louisiana, Florida, and all the islands in the Caribbean as well as the Philippines, governed from Mexico City, and lasting from the early 1500s to the early 1800s – a fact which surprised some of my colleagues, since most Americans don’t seem to realize that, for quite a long time, more than half of what is now the U.S. was under Spanish rule from México); the XIX century, when México gained its independence from Spain; and, finally, modern México.

The tour was marred, however, by some of the references which our guide made toward the indigenous peoples of this land and their cultures (though I imagine that he was really just repeating what some museum curator had instructed him to say). The average tourist might have accepted his remarks at face value, but given the composition of our group, his narration came across as very bigoted and paternalistic. One of the delegates – a Catholic woman who works with indigenous communities in Oaxaca – was particularly incensed, and took it upon herself to give us a running ‘translation’ of the guide’s comments which reflected more accurately the realities of indigenous history, life and culture. Prior to my trip, several of my Mexican friends had warned me that Monterrey has a reputation in this country as a city that harbors substantial conservative and even racist elements, an opinion shared by many of my new regiomontano friends; the trip to this museum was the most glaring example of that attitude which I've yet encountered.

Nancy, Joe and I decided to skip what remained of the tour and go, instead, to the Kahlo exhibit, since we’d been told that the museum where it was being held was about to close. We walked for several blocks and finally came upon the MARCO, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, with more than an hour to go before closing time. I have been fascinated with Frida Kahlo since my early childhood, when I came across a photo of her in a magazine – probably while she was still alive – and couldn’t take my eyes off her for hours. I had never seen anyone like her before: not so much the physical landscape of her face (though that, in itself, was riveting enough) as the dark, mysterious, terrifying and impish beings that dwelt upon it; beings that, as a small child, I could not yet name, but which seduced and scared me just the same.

Kahlo, popularly called La paloma herida ('The Wounded Dove') in México, had a complicated and tragic existence (polio at 6; an autobus accident at 18 that left her broken and on the edge of death, followed by dozens of surgeries over the rest of her life; a tempestuous, love/hate marriage of 25 years to the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera; several miscarriages, the eventual amputation of a leg, etc.) which kept her in constant physical and emotional suffering; yet, throughout it all, she was able to maintain a keen sense of humor and an insatiable lust for earthly pleasures. Perhaps more than any other artist, she was fearlessly willing to turn herself inside out. Her self-portraits, mostly in a style and palette reminiscent of her maternal indigenous roots, became an external reflection of her surrealistic interior universe, simultaneously beautiful, whimsical and gruesome – André Breton famously described her art as "a ribbon tied around a bomb." (Besides, you have to figure that anyone who was lovers with Diego Rivera, Josephine Baker, Georgia O’Keefe, Picasso, Chavela Vargas and Leon Trotsky must have had something very special going on…) Though she’s been well-known all along in the Hispanic world, Kahlo hadn’t received nearly as much notice in the U.S. until recent years, when the biographical movie Frida, which received several Academy Award nominations, propelled her into the mainstream pop culture (just having Salma Hayek, Chavela Vargas and Lila Downs all in the same film makes it worth watching!)

The exhibit at the MARCO (at least some of which will apparently tour the U.S.) included some of her most famous works, such as My Nurse and I, The Bus (the museum did not allow the taking of photographs inside the exhibit hall, but the shot on the right is of a cardboard representation of this painting on display at the entrance), The Broken Column, Frida and the Miscarriage, Without Hope, Henry Ford Hospital, A Few Small Nips, Flower of Life, The Dream, The Accident, and perhaps the best known of all, TheTwo Fridas.

One brilliant aspect of the exhibit, in addition to the paintings and sketches, was the 'letters room.' Just prior to the event, in August, there had been an announcement that some of Kahlo's letters to her physician, who was also her confidant, had been unsealed and would be published in a book entitled Mi doctorcito ('My Beloved Doctor,' the way in which she began all her correspondence to him). These letters reveal much more in depth some of the turmoil that fueled both her creativity and her suffering. In this one room, the museum exhibited several dozen of her letters to various people over the course of her life, including some of the ones found in the new book. The letters were inserted back-to-back inside thin panels of clear plexiglass, about two feet square, which hung in rows from long wires attached to the ceiling.

Given that the room was not particularly well lit, and that the letters were mostly written in Frida's own, fairly small hand, in order for people to read them they had to get right up close. That put each viewer literally just a few scant inches away from the person reading on the other side of the panel, though they couldn't really see each other because the letters blocked their view. So here were all of these people, reading the intimate correspondence of this most intimately revealing artist, while they themselves were standing in such intimate proximity to complete strangers, that they might as well have been dancing...

After the exhibit, Nancy, Joe and I walked a couple of blocks to El Rey del Cabrito, where we were joined a little later by Jesús Castillo Coronado, a very friendly Catholic theologian who was actually born in this city, but now lives and teaches in Belgium. Once again, the food was excellent, the tequila plentiful, and we enjoyed a very interesting and sociable dinner to close our last evening in Monterrey.

Wednesday, 26 September 2007 --- Adiós, Monterrey – Hola, Mexico City!

These last two days of meetings, besides providing the setting for some stimulating and productive discussions about the interreligious movement among the presenters at the Encuentro, also afforded us the opportunity to get to know each other better and a bit more casually.

I was glad, for instance, to be able to spend some time this morning talking with Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh, who lives in Birmingham (in the U.K.) and is one of the worldwide leaders of the Sikh religion. We had ‘officially’ met a little over three years ago, at the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona, and he remembered me when we first ran into each other here and greeted me very warmly. I, of course, remembered him perfectly and with great fondness, as he was the driving force behind one of the most memorable and meaningful events of the Barcelona Parliament – the langar, a free vegetarian ritual meal which the Sikhs most generously provided during lunchtime every day over the course of the Parliament as a gift to the interfaith community, and in honor of the 400th anniversary of the compilation of the Adi Granth, the first part of the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred Sikh scripture. (The photo on the left shows Selena Fox and Dennis Carpenter of Circle Sanctuary, and me, along with several members of the Barcelona pagan community at the Sikh langar.)

Indeed, the Sikhs’ generosity extended beyond the walls of the Barcelona Forum, where the Parliament was held. One of the more troubling issues surrounding that event was the eviction and displacement of several thousand people – mostly poor, tenement-dwelling immigrants and squatters – and the razing of their homes to pave the way for the various commercial buildings (hotels, convention center, concert hall, etc.) to be used by the Forum. Police barricades were deployed in an attempt to keep the remaining 'riff-raff' out of sight of Forum attendees and tourists, and when word about the langar spread throughout the city, and some of Barcelona’s poor went to the event to partake of the free meal, they were denied access by the Forum authorities. Nevertheless, the Sikhs dutifully took vats of food out beyond the Forum walls and fed them too.

I also had a conversation this morning with Jorge Manzano, a Jesuit priest who teaches philosophy at the University of Guadalajara and, from what several people here have told me, a liberal Catholic theologian who is very well-known and respected throughout México. Jorge was on one of the ‘Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred’ panels with me, and among his remarks he'd made several intriguing references to magic and mysticism which had left me curious to explore the subject a little more in depth with him. Today we had a spirited discussion that ranged from the writings of Carlos Castaneda, to the New Age movement as evidence of a hunger for the mystical experience that has not been sated by either science or materialism, to the growing diversity within Mexican society, and the complex plight of indigenous peoples in this country. I took the opportunity to tell him of very disturbing reports I’ve received from pagan friends in Guadalajara who’ve complained of religious discrimination and harassment by the authorities, to the extent of being blacklisted as members of ‘dangerous cults’ and risking random imprisonment or worse. Jorge listened very intently, and suggested that such extreme reactions are surely a symptom of the resistance that some Mexicans are experiencing toward becoming part of a more pluralistic society; he said he’d be glad to talk to my friends and see if he could be of any help.

After our closing meeting, and lunch, I said my farewells all around and went back to my room to finish the last bit of packing before leaving for Mexico City. Originally, I had thought of making the trip by bus, so I could at least see some of the countryside up close. It’s a twelve-hour ride from Monterrey, but first-class buses are fairly inexpensive and quite luxurious, so I thought it might be worth it; but then I found out that all the buses made the trip overnight, starting around 8 pm and therefore ruling out much sightseeing, so I decided at the last minute to catch a plane instead. As I was waiting in the hotel lobby for my ride to the airport, one of the Encuentro staffers came over very excitedly waving a couple of copies of that day’s newspaper, which had a color photo of me offering the blessing at the closing plenary – it was very sweet of her to hunt me down to give me the papers.

As it turned out, because I’d changed my plans so late, there had been no room for me in the van taking other presenters to the airport, so instead the Encuentro furnished me with a private car (a brand-new BMW, no less) and driver, so I had a very comfortable and leisurely ride to catch my plane. At the airport, I ran into Joseph Prabhu, another of my colleagues on the Parliament’s board and a professor of philosophy and comparative religion at California State University in Los Angeles, who, it turned out, was also going to Mexico City to give a talk, and was on the same flight.

As we lifted over El Cerro de la Silla, I mused a little on the events and experiences of the previous days, and on the new friendships I’d made during my stay in Monterrey. I was sure the next leg of my trip was going to be substantially different, though it was hard to predict exactly how; I had not been in Mexico City for a very long time, so, if nothing else, I expected to find that the place had changed a great deal. My musings were cut short, however, by the surprising brevity of the trip – it was supposed to take a little over an hour, but it seemed that, not quite forty minutes after take-off, we were getting ready to land.

The approach to Mexico City – or, as most Mexicans tend to call it, El DF (English speakers roughly pronounce it ‘Ell Day Effay’), short for El Distrito Federal, or the Federal District – was breathtaking. I had never seen it from the air before, and though I knew that it is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, with some 25 million people spread over more than 11 thousand square kilometers (by comparison, greater New York City has about 18.5 million people and some 8600 km²), I was not prepared for how vast it seemed – even from the air, I couldn’t see where it ended.

I was met at the airport by Natris Branwen, a very friendly and solicitous Mexican pagan whom I’ve known for several years through the Internet. Natris is on the staff of CIDEHUM (the Circle for Humanistic Studies), a Gestalt therapy training institute, and when she heard that I was going to be in México, invited me to come to El DF to give a talk on paganism at their center. I helped Joseph to get a cab to the university where he was staying (getting on the right cab in Mexico City is quite important, not only to ensure that you arrive at your destination directly, but also safely…), and exchanged phone numbers and talked about possibly attending each other’s talks. Then Natris and her friend Raquel took me to my hotel, which was just a couple of blocks away from the Zócalo, the huge square at the very heart of the old part of the city.

The Hotel Catedral is small and modest, particularly in contrast to the place where I stayed in Monterrey. It’s on a fairly narrow one-way side street which was almost deserted when we arrived just after dark, though I was warned that during the day it would be so crowded with peddlers and passers-by that it would take a very long time to drive just a couple of blocks to the closest thoroughfare. I was also warned that it could be dangerous to walk in this area alone at night, though I did so several times and had no problem. But the hotel was very close to several of the places I wanted to visit, in addition to being clean, comfortable and serviceable, and – at a mere $50US a night – probably the best bargain in the center of town.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, where we were joined by Sara and Carlos, the couple who founded and direct CIDEHUM. I had a very nice mole poblano de guajolote (guajolote is the common term for ‘turkey’ in México, and yes, it carries the same derogatory connotation here that the English word has in the States…), and we talked about plans for the next day. We decided that they’d pick me up fairly early for a trip to Tula, so after they left I resisted the temptation to wander a bit by myself, and went to bed instead.

Thursday, 27 September 2007 --- Spanish Gold and Toltec Warriors

Natris, Sara, Carlos, and Sara’s sister Diana came by to pick me up a little after eight this morning, hoping to avoid the street congestion and get an early start. There wasn’t much happening outside yet, so we decided we could at least afford to have a cup of coffee at the hotel restaurant to tide us over until we stopped someplace for breakfast along the way; but, in just the twenty minutes or so that it took to drink our coffee and go get the car, the street outside the hotel underwent a remarkable transformation.

Vendors selling umbrellas, magazines, CDs, candy, flowers, clothes, toys, and all sorts of trinkets had begun to set up their portable booths not only on both sidewalks all the way down the street, but also right on the street itself, next to the sidewalks. There was now barely enough room for an average-sized car to squeeze through without hitting something or somebody, although, had such a mishap ensued, it could not possibly have caused very much damage, given that traffic was literally inching along due to the many shopping carts and basket-laden bicycles and scooters overflowing with merchandise and being maneuvered right down the middle of the road by yet more vendors – some of them children – looking for a vacant spot in which to set-up. Hundreds of people were starting to jam the place, some milling about the booths and tables, checking out the goods, while others, probably on their way to work, vainly strove to hurry through the constantly-shifting labyrinth of things and beings. I guess we should have skipped the coffee…

It took us quite a while to get out of Mexico City and onto the highway that would eventually take us to Tula. About an hour into the trip, we stopped for breakfast in the town of Tepotzotlán, at a restaurant felicitously named Casa Mago (‘House of the Magician’). After all the hotel food in Monterrey, I had resolved to eat nothing but authentic Mexican dishes for the remainder of my trip, so I ordered some huevos huitlacoche – soft scrambled eggs with, well, huitlacoche, which is a black, edible fungus that grows as a parasite on ears of maize. In the U.S., it is commonly called ‘corn smut’ and routinely destroyed as blight. The Mexican name comes from a náhuatl word meaning ‘excrement,’ though it has been considered a culinary delicacy in this land since at least the time of the Aztecs. It was quite savory, with a consistency similar to pâté and an earthy taste reminiscent of truffles that really brought out the flavor of the eggs; I bet it’d be really great in tamales – may have to have this again before going back to the States.

After breakfast, my hosts took me just down the block, for a brief visit to the Museo Nacional del Virreinato (The National Museum of the Viceroyship), the main tourist attraction in Tepotzotlán. It’s a small museum established in the mid-1960s, and housed within a 17th century church and school. The collection proved to be a blatant obeisance to the ‘splendor’ of the Spanish conquest of México, as evidenced by many of the pieces on display (note the mounted conquistador on the right, with his horse stomping upon an indigenous ‘prince’), the various dioramas, and the disingenuous iterations of the Spaniards’ eventual ‘party-line’ to retroactively rationalize their occupation of these lands and their savaging of the Aztecs – they had to do it in order to ‘liberate’ the other, smaller tribes from the yoke of the oppressive Aztec empire (ironically, this was the very same rationale used by the U.S. some 350 years later to justify the so-called ‘Spanish-American’ War). The most famous exhibits in the museum are the two retablos – huge, floor-to-ceiling altarpieces (each maybe 15’ wide by 20’ high), elaborately carved out of cedarwood and completely covered in 23.5-karat gold leaf. These structures, proudly identified as symbols of the ‘Spiritual Conquest’ of Nueva España (the Spanish colonial name for the lands under its control in North and Central America), are, without a doubt, masterful works of art. To me, though, that kind of ostentatious display of ecclesiastical wealth, especially in the midst of an indigenous population mired in poverty, disease and hunger, just seems unconscionable and immoral. Needless to say, I didn’t stay very long.

From there we went to Tula de Allende, a small town about 50 miles to the northwest of Mexico City in the state of Hidalgo, an area with abundant deposits of alabaster and obsidian, which some believe to be the site of the ancient Toltec city of Tollan, given mythical standing by the Aztecs. There’s a good deal of confusion and controversy surrounding this site (as there is in general with a lot of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history, both because there were such complex interrelationships among the various peoples, and because the Spaniards destroyed most of the documentation that could have shed considerably more light on the subject). The prevailing current thought seems to be that the site at Tula was built by the Toltecs several hundred years before the Aztecs arrived and made it their own; then again, there are some very interesting similarities between this site and the Mayan remains at Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán which have raised a lot of questions and debate concerning their origins.

We started at the small museum in the Archaeological Zone, and procured the assistance of Macuilli Tecpactlzin, a very knowledgeable local guide, who gave us a running commentary on the various artifacts – including a ceremonial urn depicting the face of the rain-god Tlaloc (note the flowing rivers of 'tears' issuing from his eyes), as well as one of the earliest examples of a chacmool (a sideways-glancing, reclining guardian figure, usually bearing a bowl upon its chest wherein were placed the hearts of sacrificial victims) – and then led us out to the ruins. On the way there, he pointed out several examples of nopal, an edible cactus that has been of great importance in the history of México – it’s depicted on the national seal, and the Aztecs apparently considered it a symbol of everlasting life, since even when the plant dries out, a new one grows from it. The fruit of the nopal, called tuna (nothing to do with fish…) is sweet and widely used in Mexican cuisine.

Macuilli asked me to take special note of some white spots that could be found randomly on the surface of the nopal; those, he informed me, were examples of a parasitic insect that the Aztecs called nocheztli, but is commonly known in México as cochinil (‘cochineal,’ in English) which feeds and breeds on the cactus and exudes a white secretion to protect itself from predators and the sun. The cochinil produces a very durable, intensely bright red dye that was precious to the Aztecs as a symbol of life, given its resemblance to blood, and was used by them to paint their temples and other important buildings. Apparently they valued it so much that they often demanded tribute from some of the subservient tribes in cochinil, rather than gold or silver.

As we entered the archaeological site, we came upon a recessed, L-shaped field surrounded by a stone wall – a fairly typical arena for the playing of ullamalitzli, a pre-Columbian ballgame that seems to have been popular, in one version or another, among many indigenous peoples throughout Central America. To judge by how the game is played nowadays, it appears to have had elements similar to basketball, volleyball and soccer, with two teams vying for a hard and heavy rubber ball kept in play by being hit mostly with hips and forearms. But the game was much more than a sport, it was fundamentally a symbolic and ritualistic contest in which the players, at least on certain important occasions, were actually competing for their lives, with the losers being sacrificed at the end.

From there, we walked past a carved stone rampart, the Coatepantli, or Wall of Serpents, which shows depictions of gigantic rattlesnakes devouring human skeletal remains, as well as images of eagles and jaguars, symbols of warriorship among the Aztecs. It is topped by stylized spiral carvings of conchs, which are a symbol of Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent deity found throughout Mesoamerican mythology, and all along the wall one can still see faded splotches of cochinil paint from the Aztec era.

Just beyond the Coatepantli is the main attraction of the Tula site, a large, five-layer pyramid with typically tall, narrow steps. Macuilli advised us not to climb the steps straight up as if we were taking a regular set of stairs, a mistake which he said most people tend to make. According to him, extant carvings and paintings, as well as traditional lore, indicate that the steps should be managed in a diagonal, zig-zagging pattern, resembling the slithering movements of a serpent; he said that such an approach is much less strenuous and, in the end, faster, than going straight up or down.

Just as we reached the top of the pyramid, I noticed a small feather drifting toward the ground right in front of me; I caught it and instinctively looked up, but there were no birds flying overhead or even standing any place within sight, and there was no wind at the time, which made me wonder where the feather could have come from. Macuilli took notice, and asked me what I had; when I showed him, he said it must be some sort of sign, since, according to him, birds never came near the top of the pyramid, and he pointed out that there were no other feathers to be seen anywhere around us.

Upon this pyramid are the famous Atlantes de Tula – four large, carved basalt statues of Toltec warriors, about 15 feet tall, which, along with several other carved pillars, presumably supported a roof or some other structure (a lot of people don’t seem to realize that most of what remains of the Mesoamerican pyramids are really foundations upon which rested wooden buildings of one sort or another, long since destroyed). Apparently, there are some New Age types who hold that the statues at Tula represent beings from the fabled continent of Atlantis and are of extraterrestrial origin, to judge from the ‘space ray guns’ carved at their sides. In actuality, the ‘guns’ are really spear-throwers called átlatl (átl is the nahuátl word for ‘water’) – hence the name Atlantes – which were originally used for fishing and hunting, and subsequently as weapons.

On our way back to the parking lot, as we dawdled along a row of merchants displaying their wares, so I could buy a few souvenirs, I overheard Macuilli asking a couple of my companions if I was an anthropologist, because of some of the questions I had asked. As I finished shopping and rejoined them, they were in the process of explaining to him who I was and the purpose of my visit to México. Macuilli was very interested in hearing about my background and practices, and said that now that he knew what I did, it made sense to him why he’d had the impression that my catching that feather on top of the pyramid was some kind of sign.

He also wanted to know about the Encuentro in Monterrey, and became very animated when I mentioned the Indigenous Walk, and some of what I had experienced there. He really opened up then, and we carried a long and rambling conversation about indigenous rights, shamanism, Carlos Castaneda, the appropriation of indigenous ceremonies by ‘New Age White Indians’, etc. Even after reaching the parking lot, we kept talking for another hour or so. As we were saying good-bye, Macuilli invited me to come back to attend a private ceremony they were having in two days’ time; unfortunately, that was the night when my talk on paganism was scheduled, so I regretfully had to decline.

Speaking of Castaneda, on our way back to el DF, we stopped for a bit in Tula to get something to eat, and we walked right by the cathedral, which I remembered was mentioned in one of his books (I forget which) as the place where he supposedly met the Death Defier, a shape-shifting sorceress who had lived for hundreds of years. I poked my head in, but, alas, apparently she was out of town today.

Earlier in the day, while we were still in Mexico City, I had called Helen Samuels – the American woman I’d met at the Indigenous Walk – and left a message to see if there was any chance of our getting together. On the drive back to the hotel, and once again within cell phone range, I found she’d responded with an invitation to a small gathering in the city the following evening. We already had a trip planned to the basilica of Guadalupe and to the pyramids in Teotihuacan, but my hosts assured me it would not be a problem to arrange a visit with Helen at the end of the day.

Friday, 28 September 2007 --- A Drizzly Stroll Along the Avenue of the Dead

Today, my friends came for me right at 8:00 and we left the hotel immediately, managing to just beat the crazy sidewalk scene that had delayed us the previous morning, and we grabbed a quick Mexican breakfast at a coffee shop along the way to our eventual destination of Teotihuacan, the huge complex of pyramids and ruins – about 25 miles to the northeast of Mexico City – which once comprised the largest pre-Columbian city in Mesoamerica.

But we had another brief stop to make between breakfast and the pyramids: the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Catholic patroness of México. I had been to the old basilica many years ago, and was curious to see the ‘new’ one (built in the mid 1970s), since it was pretty much on the way. Besides, no matter your religion, it’s rather impolite to visit Mexico City without paying your respects to the Lady.

La Guadalupita, as she is fondly called here, stands at the very core of Mexican culture. In fact, people who say they venerate the Virgin have outnumbered Christians altogether in some opinion polls, underscoring a famous statement by the novelist Carlos Fuentes to the effect that, to be a Mexican, you don’t have to believe in God, but you do have to believe in her.

The legend goes that the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian man named Juan Diego on a cool December morning barely ten years after Hernán Cortés had conquered the Mexica (Aztecs) in Tenochtitlan, the heart of what is now the Federal District, and asked him to tell the bishop to build her a church on the hill of Tepeyac where they were standing, overlooking the city. When the bishop asked for some kind of sign, Juan Diego met the Virgin again, and she instructed him to gather flowers from the hilltop, place them in his ayate (a sort of apron), and bring them to the bishop. Despite it being winter, he found flowers – Spanish roses, no less – blooming on the hill (a miracle), and when he unfurled his apron to give them to the bishop, they found that an image of the Virgin had formed on his ayate (another miracle). While the Virgin had Caucasian features, her skin was darker than that normally found on representations of Mary, so she became a powerful symbol for the indigenous people, who converted to Catholicism by the millions over the next few years. The original, miraculous image, cut out from Juan Diego’s ayate, hangs in the basilica and is the focus of constant peregrinations by the devout.

That’s the official Catholic story, taught to children not only in México, but all over the Hispanic world (though I vividly remember that, in the version I was told as a child in school, Juan Diego was an Indian boy, not a sixty-year-old man, when the Virgin appeared to him.) There is another, different story, of course. A lot of non-Catholics (and even some Catholics, including clergy) would point out, first of all, the similarities between the Virgin of Guadalupe and Tonantzin, the Aztec mother/lunar goddess with whom the hill of Tepeyac had long been associated. Many of them believe that the whole story was an elaborate plot by the Church to convert the Indians, that the picture was simply painted by a Spanish artist, and that Juan Diego was recruited (and paid handsomely) by the bishop to stage a charade. The Church certainly made syncretic associations of the Virgin and the saints with various pagan deities throughout Europe long before the colonization of the Americas, and the influence that la Guadalupita exerted on the indigenous populations was not only demonstrated by the huge numbers of conversions following her ‘appearance,’ but also by the fact that her image, painted on battle standards, was used by both Miguel Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata, respectively, in the Mexican War of Independence and the Mexican Revolution to rally armies of mostly indigenous soldiers. The image of the Virgin has undergone limited photochemical analysis which seems to indicate that it was made with conventional materials and methods used by European artists in the 16th century, but the Church has also commissioned other tests which negate those findings and conclude that the materials and the process responsible for the image are of no known provenance, supporting the belief in its miraculous origin.

We parked in an underground garage about a block from the basilica, and, to get from the car to the stairs leading back up to the street, we had to pass through a conglomerate of religious goods stores, all seemingly selling the exact same things: pictures, statues, books, ashtrays, mugs, coasters, keychains – you name it – bearing the image of la Guadalupita. In truth, it seemed more like one gigantic store subdivided into maybe a dozen smaller ones, except that there didn’t seem to be any difference in the merchandise they were selling, and they were all interconnected. At any rate, there didn’t appear to be a way to get back outside without going through at least one of them – religious marketing at its most sophisticated…

As we entered the plaza, I saw the old colonial basilica directly in front of us, pretty much as I remembered it; to the left was the new building, much bigger and modern. The plaza was mostly deserted, though my friends told me that, toward the beginning of December, as the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe approaches, the place is overflowing with throngs of pilgrims from all parts of the country and beyond (many of them, like the man on the right, make the journey on their knees). They said that, in fact, one of the main reasons they’d had to build a new basilica was that the old one, built in the 17th century on weak foundations, had started sinking over the years from the weight of all the pilgrims that would crowd into it at various times of the year.

The new basilica is quite ample and modern, and apparently can hold more than 40,000 people at once during the major holidays. Just as we entered, a group of chasubled priests were processing in to say Mass for a couple of hundred faithful. The framed image of the Virgin was clearly visible hanging under a crucifix behind the main altar, with a Mexican flag draped beneath it, but there didn’t seem to be a way to get close enough to see her well – let alone take a picture – without getting up on the altar itself, which, of course, we weren’t about to do. But my friends took me to a side door which revealed that there was a gap maybe 15 feet wide between the rear of the main altar and the back wall where the image was hanging, a space that wasn’t at all noticeable if you looked at the altar from a distance. So we were literally about five feet behind and twelve feet below the priests celebrating Mass, and right beneath the image of la Guadalupita. Two short ‘moving sidewalks’ (the kind you’d find in airports) going slowly in different directions, enabled visitors to view the image closely, and at the same time prevented logjams – a very well-designed setup all around.

On our way back to the car, as we walked once again through the religious shops, one of my companions purchased a bag of unconsecrated communion hosts; apparently this is quite commonplace in Mexico City – however many hosts don’t get consecrated during Mass over the course of a week are simply bagged up and sold as snacks, which my friends happily consumed on the way to the pyramids.

Teotihuacan appears to have been the largest city in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, and perhaps the fifth or sixth largest in the world during its heyday, with more than a quarter million inhabitants. It’s been determined that the main parts of the city were built around the time of Christ (though there’s much debate as to the identity of its builders) and that it flourished for several centuries until the central section – including the three main pyramids, the temples, and the homes of the aristocracy – were burned and apparently abandoned around 750 C.E. Some scholars believe this was the result of an enemy attack, but others speculate it could have been due to a revolt by the lower classes, since they seem to have continued living in the remaining parts of the city for a couple hundred more years. It was subsequently taken over by the Toltecs, and finally by the Aztecs, who considered it the ‘home of the gods’.

As we entered the site, we were directly in front of what the Spaniards called la Ciudadela (‘the citadel’), a walled, recessed courtyard (estimated to have been large enough to hold the entire population of Teotihuacan within it in case of an enemy attack) fronted by four small pyramids and encompassing, toward the back, the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent god (in the photo at left, you can see two of the small frontal pyramids, and the top of Quetzalcoatl’s showing behind them in the distance). The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent is not nearly as large as those of the Sun and the Moon, but it features more ornamentation, including stone heads of animals going up the central steps (which are much smaller than the steps of the other two pyramids), and carved heads of Quetzalcoatl and of the rain god, Tlaloc, along the sides.

To our left, extending for a couple of miles, was the Miccaotli, or, in Spanish, la Calzada de los muertos (the ‘Avenue of the Dead’, so called by the Aztecs because they thought the various small pyramids along its course were tombs) – a straight and wide boulevard leading almost due north, and ending at the foot of the Pyramid of the Moon. Apparently, the Avenue goes in the opposite direction for another three miles or so, but since that’s not the area of main archaeological interest, it hasn’t been as well-kept or defined as the northern end. For most of its upper stretch, the Avenue of the Dead is lined by stone embankments over a foot high, which has led some researchers to suspect that it might, at one point, have been filled with water – one very long reflecting pool that would have captured and mirrored the light of both Sun and Moon, to whom the two main pyramids were ostensibly dedicated, and which would have also served as part of an irrigation system to provide easy access to water to all parts of the city. One author has even suggested that it might have resembled Venice, with a multitude of shallow, crisscrossing canals.

We walked in the light rain along the Avenue of the Dead, and finally stood at the base of the Pyramid of the Sun, the third largest in the world. Like most of the other pyramids in México, it was built in the talud-tablero style: the talud is typically an inwardly-sloping platform upon which sits the tablero – a square or rectangular table which is in some cases slightly larger than its supporting talud, so that its edges protrude; each succesive talud-tablero is smaller than the one beneath it, creating the pyramidal shape. In Aztec times, the stones and adobe bricks from which the pyramid was built would have been covered with (presumably) white stucco painted with bright, colorful designs, and would have had a huge, roofed wooden temple at the very top – in other words, it (and the other pyramids) would have looked remarkably different from their current appearance.

The Pyramid of the Sun is about 250 feet high, which means that to get to the very top is the equivalent of climbing more than 20 ordinary flights of stairs; except that, in this case, the steps are not the usual 7 inches or so in height, but more like 12”-14” of bare, worn, uneven stone, and some of the steepest stairs have no handrails. When you add to this the fact that you’re standing at an altitude of almost a mile-and-a-half above sea level, where the air is fairly thin, the climb can be a daunting prospect for all but the most athletic. On top of everything else, on this particular day the persistent drizzle had rendered the steps quite slippery, and as a result two of my companions decided to forgo the climb altogether. The rest of us, using the zig-zagging approach that our guide had taught us the day before, made it to the top in about fifteen minutes – not bad considering that we had to stop a couple of times to catch our breaths, and were also slowed by the surprisingly large number of visitors on such a wet, unseasonably cold day.

The view from the top was stunning, despite the low clouds, rain and fog that limited the range of visibility; I can just imagine what one could see on a bright, sunny day. Today, the Teotihuacan with which most people are familiar is just the roughly two-mile long stretch from the Ciudadela to the Pyramid of the Moon, but that’s just a tiny fraction of the size the city would have had in its apogee, estimated at over 30 square miles. I have seen several different artists’ imagined renditions of Teotihuacan based on the archaeological information available, and one of the exhibits in the museum in Monterrey was a large diorama of the city. Standing on top of the pyramid, I tried to imagine the sights and sounds of what once was a teeming cosmopolitan center – the vast expanse of rectangular buildings, laid out in neat quadrants, spreading all over the valley, the marketplaces, the bustling crowds, the shouts of peddlers, the clouds of burning copal from all the various temples, in striking contrast to the silence and stillness of this place today.

Just fifteen minutes or so after we’d reached the top, a bus tour group joined us, and among them was my friend Joseph Prabhu, with whom I’d flown in from Monterrey. It was a very nice surprise, and we got into a spirited conversation about what each of us had been doing over the last couple of days in Mexico City. One of my companions took a photo of Joseph and me with the Pyramid of the Moon in the background. We also met a young woman from Barcelona, who had attended some of the Parliament events there in 2004, and who was very gratified to learn that both of us were quite familiar with her home town.

Eventually, we made our way back down to the Avenue of the Dead to join the rest of our party, and continued on to the Pyramid of the Moon, which is a bit smaller than the one we had just visited, but still considerably larger than the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent. The Pyramid of the Moon sits at the northernmost end of the Avenue of the Dead, and offers a very different perspective from that of the Pyramid of the Sun. We were not able to climb to the very top, since some of the steps were in bad shape and especially dangerous because of the rain, so access was prohibited beyond the first main platform. Still, we had a very good view of the length of the Avenue of the Dead, and of the various smaller pyramids and platforms alongside it.

Our last stop in Teotihuacan was the Temple of Quetzalpapalotl, the Feathered Butterfly, goddess of reincarnation and symbol of the spirits of the ancestors. Quetzalpapalotl was identified with the Monarch Butterfly, which migrates from the U.S. and Canada and arrives at its winter habitat in central México by the millions from mid to late October (interestingly, this is right around the time when Mesoamerican indigenous peoples celebrate their Day of the Dead.) The Temple of Quetzalpapalotl was the most colorful place we saw in Teotihuacan – lots of reds and pinks bringing out the details in intricately carved stone columns.

By the time we returned to the parking lot, we were pretty famished, so we stopped for an early dinner at a nearby restaurant. The waitress brought us the customary cortesía (‘courtesy’), a complimentary caballito (‘little horse’ – a small, narrow, elongated shot glass) brimming with tequila, and I ordered some mixiote, a sort of spicy Mexican haggis, which was delicious. During dinner, I called Helen Samuels to confirm that we’d be dropping by for a visit a little later, and to get directions.

The drive back to el DF was much quicker than we’d anticipated, and though it took us a little while to find the place where Helen’s gathering was being held, we made it with plenty of time. I was really looking forward to seeing her again, as she had felt very much like a kindred spirit during our brief encounter in Monterrey.

The place turned out to be this amazing, huge house in an otherwise unremarkable middle-class neighborhood in the southwestern part of the city. The house had a high concrete wall all around it, so we couldn’t see it at all until two massive steel gates were opened by remote control and we eventually managed an impossibly tight, 120-degree right turn off the very narrow street we were on, with a long line of cars impatiently waiting behind us.

Then we found ourselves inside a large, forested courtyard that already held perhaps two-dozen other vehicles. A beautiful, friendly dog came out to greet us, with Helen at his heels; she ushered us inside the fairly modern, multileveled building, with lots of picture windows and open spaces, and gorgeous works of art everywhere – many of them, as we soon learned, created by the owner of the house, an artist who had just spent more than twenty years trying to reproduce the brilliant, organic pigments that the Aztecs used in their paintings, and which she had recently begun to produce commercially. The place was full of all kinds of interesting people – musicians, environmentalists, visual artists, filmmakers, social activists, community organizers – most of whom seemed to be very close to one another. They reminded me so much of my own community, that I instantly felt right at home.

I spent a good bit of time talking with Helen about the Encuentro and about her various projects. She, along with some of the other people at the gathering, lives in an ecovillage just south of the city, which she invited me to visit in the next few days while I’m here, if I have the time. She very kindly gave me the gift of a 250-page book – compiled by Laura Valdés Kuri, one of the women present tonight – entitled Ecohábitat: Experiencias rumbo a la sustentabilidad (‘Ecohabitat: Experiences Toward Sustainability’), which features some of the people in her group and includes many beautiful color photographs illustrating their work in environmental education, alternative energy resources, organic farming, community development, earth spirituality, street theater, etc.

One of the people Helen wanted me to meet was Alberto Ruz Buenfil, who, from what I gathered, is one of the founders of her community; in Monterrey she had told me that I reminded her of him, that she had a feeling we did a very similar type of work – she referred to him as a 'shaman' – and that we'd get along famously. Alberto is the son of a very noted Mexican archaeologist who specialized in the Mayan civilization and discovered the tomb of the god-king Pakal the Great; he told me about accompanying his father on his digs throughout Central America, of the connections he made as a result with various indigenous peoples, and of his sense of how important it is to revive the spirit of tribal communities in Western culture.

I also had a chance to talk with Alice Klein, who is the publisher of NOW, Toronto's alternative weekly magazine which, as it turns out, I remembered reading when i was in that city last year in the summer. Alice's first film, Call of the Hummingbird, just came out in the spring and is having its Mexican premiere this weekend. The film is a documentary about an ecospiritual festival in Brazil – one of the events organized by Alberto and his nomadic caravan – and apparently includes some of the people gathered at the house tonight. She invited me to attend the first showing tomorrow, but unfortunately I can't do so because of my talk at CIDEH; there is another showing on Sunday, though, so I'll try to make that.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with these folks – they felt so much like my crowd, like family; several of them commented that they could have sworn they’d known me from before, and one young woman, in particular, told me something like, “I feel as if you were a distant uncle of mine, whom I’d heard a lot about, but had never met, and here you are, in the flesh.” As we said our good-byes, we exchanged names and e-mail addresses all around; I would definitely like to remain in touch with this group.